asunnys

I am about to start working as a Unit Coordinator in the Behavioral Med. section of the hospital. I've been working on the surgical recovery floor for over a year - just transferring from one unit to another. I know there is a difference between the two, but can anyone give me their perspective on what those differences are? I assume I will be dealing with many more medications orders/changes and not nearly so many diagnostics testing orders (except for labs)... Any advice on how to ease the transition? For those nurses out there currently working in psychiatric care facilities, what makes a unit coordinator truly priceless?

One of the things that we do to help decipher which doctor wrote the order is keep a list of doctors signatures with their names in print. We just run off a copy of an order and attach it to the list we already have. About once a year we re-copy and arrange all the signatues alphabetically again. (helps when adding in new doctors, especially the hospitalists!) I wish i could take credit for the idea, but it's still wonderful and helps out a lot. As far as reading the orders themselves, practice is the only thing that has helped me. I've been a unit coordinator for about a year now, and I can deciper about 95% of the handwriting (compared to maybe 20% when I was first hired). Just never be afraid to ask the doctor or a nurse to help figure it out. It's not such a big deal if you read something wrong, but it's huge if you enter in the wrong order.